"Everyone who died in Nettlebush is buried here," Rafael said. "Can I have the flashlight? I wanna find one of my ancestors, too."
At least he wasn't afraid anymore. I stood and handed him the flashlight. "Thanks," he said. I followed him through the blocks of stone.
"There's one of the Takes Flights, damn them, people get our names mixed up all the time. 'Hadrian Gives Light,' never heard of you, sorry buddy... Look, there's my grandma on my dad's side, the one with the nails like claws... Wait, I'm going in the wrong direction..."
He stopped suddenly. He shot me a quick smile over his shoulder and pointed at a headstone.
"Rumilly Gives Light. That's my oldest ancestor. I mean, not my oldest, just the oldest one whose name I know. She would've gone to Carlisle Indian School around the same time as your...great-great-grandmother, or something like that."
I sat down on the ground next to Rafael and smiled, my fist under my chin and my elbow on my knee, encouraging him to talk.
"In Shoshone," he said, " 'Gives Light' is 'Makan Imaa.' Oh, you wanna know something? 'Light' and 'morning' are the same word in Shoshone. So my family doesn't really know whether we're supposed to be called Gives Light, or Gives Morning. Rumilly went with Gives Light, I guess. Uncle Gabriel says she was a candlemaker, so maybe that's why. Plains People named themselves back then. It's not like today when we're stuck with whatever crappy names our parents gave us."
Like Skylar. I wrinkled my face.
"Like Rafael," Rafael corrected distastefully.
I exaggerated my frown. I liked the name Rafael.
"Yeah, well, I don't like it. It makes me sound like I belong stuck to the top of the Sistine Chapel. You can blame my mom for that. She was big on the Christian stuff."
I squeezed Rafael's shoulder. I knew he missed her.
For a moment, there was only the sound of silence. The night wind rustled the leaves hanging from the oak trees, fresh and green, verdant with spring. Rafael tilted his head back and gazed at them appreciatively. He looked at me and showed me a small smile.
"I don't think you're afraid of anything."
Sure I was. I just didn't like people to know about it.
"Well, I'm not afraid of anything," Rafael said. "Not when I'm with you."
19
Lemons and Blueberries
When I woke the next morning, it was unreal, like my body had yet to realize that we were home. I guessed I had to get used to my bedroom all over again.
What was even more unreal was finding Zeke Owns Forty in the kitchen, laughing at a detective story on the radio. He was pretty messy about it, too; he laughed with his mouth open, blue corn mush spattering all over the scrubbed table.
"That Jack the Ripper cracks me up!"
I didn't
want
to question his sanity; but I just couldn't help myself. Granny gave me a bowl of blue corn mush and changed the radio station.
"Hey!" Zeke complained.
"You will
not
interrupt my soap operas."
Zeke shrugged and slouched over his breakfast bowl.
I probably shouldn't have stayed out so late with Rafael last night. I was dead tired when I walked to school with Zeke, Zeke humming obliviously. I'm home, I thought, euphoric. Home, but tired. The bull and pinyon pines, the dirt paths and log cabins, the blue, blue sky and blue-gray badlands--they were mine and I was theirs.
I was bombarded with questions the moment I set foot in the classroom.
"Where were you?"
"What happened?"
"I saw your name on the news!"
"Were you arrested?"
"Did you go to jail?"
"Did you go to the white house?"
Maybe they'd all simultaneously forgotten I was mute. I returned their inquiries with dull stares and settled into my seat. It wasn't enough to discourage Aubrey, who went on jabbering in my ear--"I knew you'd be back! Said as much, didn't I, Annie? I set aside some artichokes for you, and some mint, of course, are you allergic?"--until the teacher walked into the schoolhouse.
"Alright, everyone," Mr. Red Clay said, rapping his knuckles on the chalkboard. "Let's talk science."
How Mr. Red Clay's lessons usually worked was that the entire school day--four hours--was devoted to one subject. When he addressed the whole room, he spoke about a broad concept. When he went up and down the rows, reviewing with each class individually, he adjusted the topic depending on how old of a child he was talking to. The first graders got the simple versions and the twelfth graders got the more elaborate details.
It was the same today as every day. When he spoke to the smaller kids, he taught them about solids, liquids, and gases. When he spoke to us, he talked about boiling water.
"Boiling is not a heating process, but a cooling process," Mr. Red Clay said. "When you boil water and it produces steam, that's thermal energy being dragged out of the water. Loss of energy, loss of heat. If you could stick your finger in a pot of boiling water and endure the excruciating heat at the surface, you would find that the bottom of the pot is ice cold."
He threw William Sleeping Fox a swift look. "I
don't
advise you to try it."
At the end of the school day, I stuck around to talk to Mr. Red Clay in private.
"Skylar. How may I help you?"
I didn't really know how I should start.
I was in foster care
, I signed.
I had to go to a different school
--
"Yes, I know. Your case worker--" An unpleasant expression ghosted across his face. "--called me at three in the morning for your records."
Oh, jeez.
I'm really sorry about that
, I signed.
"No, no, don't be. So what is it?"
In my other school
, I signed,
I took a couple of tests. But the curriculum was different
--
"You failed the tests," Mr. Red Clay surmised.
I was starting to feel sheepish.
Is there any way I can make it up? Extra credit?
"There's no need," Mr. Red Clay said. "I never intended to count whatever grades they gave you."
Well, that sure surprised me.
Mr. Red Clay smiled; I had the impression it was meant to hide a smirk. "You'll forgive me for saying this," he said, "but I don't put much stock in this country's education system. There's a reason why American schools are ranked twenty-first in the entire world. Let me put it this way, Skylar. There are only three things you need to know in life. Who you are, how the world works, and how you can change it."
I didn't know how to change it. I knew what I would have liked to change--a lot of things--but I didn't know how to change them.
I went to the hospital after school to see how Danny was doing. I found him sitting up in bed and snacking on sweet potatoes. A man I took to be his father sat staunchly at his bedside and wouldn't let go of his hand. Poor guy looked like he'd been crying only minutes ago.
"They adopted him," Mr. Patreya told me. "Without me knowing about it. I kept asking those social workers, 'Where did you take my son?' No one would tell me. That can't be legal, can it? Adopting him without telling me?"
My hands curled at my sides. No, it wasn't legal. But the law didn't seem to concern itself with Native Americans.
I penned a letter to Marilu as soon as I went home. I was sure that Danny would be back in Pleasance long before my letter arrived, but I wanted to tell her about our meeting anyway.
"Hey!" Zeke said, shoving his face in front of mine. "What are you doing?"
Zeke, I'd realized, was kind of a nosy person. I really don't mean that disparagingly; I just can't think of a better way to put it. I showed him my stationery, but he'd already lost interest; he wandered off to the staircase to play percussion on the banisters. I wondered whether he was on ADD meds.
It was five o'clock when I heard a knock on the front door. By itself, that was pretty odd. Everyone knows everyone in Nettlebush, so we tend to just walk into each other's homes whenever we want--provided that it's daytime. Since the serial murders eleven years ago, each house gets padlocked at night.
I got up to answer the door, but Dad beat me to it, looking oddly animated. Small wonder; on the other side was Officer Hargrove.
"Come in," Dad said. "Can I get you anything?"
"No, but thanks. I'm on the beat."
Dad led Officer Hargrove into the sitting room, where she took one look at me and pulled me into a bear hug.
"I'm so sorry," she told me.
Why was everyone convinced it was their fault? I pat her on the back, a little mystified.
"Can they take him away again?" Dad asked.
Officer Hargrove let go of me. "Yeah, but they probably won't," she said. "He's a flight risk. CPS won't bother wasting time and money on someone they know'll just run away again. You got a minute, Paul?"
"Of course."
I wanted to ask Officer Hargrove how DeShawn and Jessica were doing. I kind of missed them, truth be told. I settled for my usual silence, smiling when Dad and Officer Hargrove went into the kitchen for a private chat.
Just before dinner I took Balto out west to the farmland to see the apple trees in bloom. He yipped and pranced, started, then yipped again when he heard coywolves calling back to him from the wilderness. I wondered why he didn't run off to meet with them. I was glad for it, though; I didn't know how I would protect him if his former packmates attacked him. I climbed up an apple tree to pare a few blossoms for Granny. I loved the heady scent of the flowers, dizzying and sweet. I admired the elegant look of them, whorling and flimsy and white, petals dipped in faint persimmon where the receding sunlight scorched them enviously. I loved the fresh grass rolling and rippling in the wind like celebratory sails; I loved how the clouds tugging across the fiery furnace of a red sky were as gray as wet concrete. I sat on a tree branch and watched the sky's inferno quench and dim to a sleepy shade of amethyst, soft as the deliberate strokes of a paintbrush, lethargic clouds cooling into silver. Home. Home. My heart's rhythm spelled the word: Home.
Mrs. Red Clay addressed the community at dinner that night.
"The tribal council has determined to initiate a police force," she said. "Prospective applicants should visit the council building between five o'clock AM and five o'clock PM, Mondays through Saturdays."
I heard confused murmurs traveling on still air. I knew the reason for them. Nettlebush had never had its own police force before. If something horrific happened on the reservation, we were supposed to defer to the FBI. Of course, the FBI couldn't be bothered with us most of the time, so we wound up defaulting to the old ways.
Like blood law.
I'd never liked the idea of an eye for an eye--it just doesn't sit well with me--but I realized that blood law was probably what deterred the majority of crimes from happening in Nettlebush. There was a good reason Rafael's father was the only murderer in the history of the reserve.
"The Shoshone Nation is in the final stages of purchasing the Bear River Massacre site. Once purchased, we will move to have the Cache Valley recognized by Congress as a National Historic Site. The petition sits in the tribal council office and should be signed at your earliest convenience."
Good, I thought. And maybe we could rip that travesty of a plaque out of the ground, too.
The men extinguished the nightly bonfire with a barrel of water and the men and the women carried their pots and their folding chairs home. I carried Granny's loom off the lawn where she had left it and into the house. I couldn't find Balto anywhere, but I wasn't terribly concerned; he liked to stalk small prey in the trees out back, sometimes well into the morning.
I went back to the firepit to say good night to Annie and the guys. Annie had other ideas in mind.
"Why don't you boys come back to my house? We'll make cake."
"Because that won't be a total disaster," Rafael said sourly.
"I would be honored," Aubrey said, with a convincing amount of dignity.
I noticed Zeke lingering by the smoking firepit, trying not to look like he'd been eavesdropping. I felt sorry for him, and I didn't know why. I whistled at him and he jumped. I caught his eye and waved him over.
"Uh, what?" he said.
Annie pressed her lips together. I wondered what the debate looked like inside her head. "Do you want to come over, Zeke? We're making cake."
I saw his face light up, though he hid it quickly behind the half-curtain of his hair. "Sure!" he said. "I mean, I guess so."
Rafael scowled at him. I touched his arm and he relented. I winked.
We went back to Annie's house and she lit the oil lamps in her kitchen. Lila tromped in and out and complained that we were cramping her style. Aubrey got the milk and the butter out of the icebox and Rafael pulled the flour and the sugar down from the tall shelves. Zeke found the blueberries in the cellar and tried not to drop the eggs and Annie and I grated lemon peels into a bowl.